New Delhi: With an ODI World Cup in South Africa looming next year and India’s middle order looking increasingly fragile, the think-tank has moved into contingency mode. At the heart of those conversations sits a new name for the top six: Tilak Varma.
Not as a headline act. Not yet. As insurance.
Team management and selectors, aware of how quickly injuries and form can shred a World Cup blueprint, have identified Tilak as a potential backup to Shreyas Iyer in the middle order. His left-handedness is a major part of the appeal. In a lineup heavy with right-handers, he offers a different angle, a different challenge for opposition attacks that have grown comfortable stacking plans against a predictable template.
But the conversations go beyond just which side of the wicket he stands.
A Left-Hander Who Must Bowl
Tilak has been told clearly: the bat alone won’t be enough. India’s brains trust believes his off-spin holds real promise, and he has been asked to sharpen that skill with urgency.
This isn’t a luxury request. It is a necessity.
The current ODI top order offers almost nothing with the ball, and the management has repeatedly flagged that lack of part-time options as a structural problem. When the first six can’t roll their arm over, the burden shifts brutally onto the lower order and frontline bowlers. That strain has shown up in balance issues, selection compromises and, at times, in India’s fielding and energy across 50 overs.
The message is clear: the next wave of batters must bring more than one discipline.
World Cup Planning on Hold – For Now
The real World Cup planning, though, will not fully kick in until October, when India travel to New Zealand. That’s when most of the first-choice players are expected to be back in the ODI setup.
Before that, the home ODI series against West Indies from September 27 will be something of a one-off. A full-strength T20 squad is scheduled to head to Japan for the Asian Games at the same time, which means the ODI group will be missing several key names.
Inside the dressing room, head coach Gautam Gambhir and captain Shubman Gill have made their concerns plain. As one BCCI source put it, “Head coach Gautam Gambhir and captain Shubman Gill feel there isn’t any backup ready for the middle order. With Hardik Pandya and Nitish Kumar Reddy being prone to injuries, they want someone in the top order who can at least chip in with four overs in an ODI.”
That line says as much about India’s scars from recent tournaments as it does about their future. The team cannot afford to walk into a World Cup again with a brittle middle order and no safety net.
Iyer Question Marks, Aging Giants
Shreyas Iyer sits at the center of this puzzle. Once seen as the long-term anchor of India’s middle order, he now carries two shadows: fitness and recent exposure to pace and bounce.
“The team has to be prepared for conditions in South Africa in the World Cup. Iyer got injured in Australia and his game against pace and bounce is untested of late,” the source said.
That alone would be enough to justify a backup plan. But India’s concerns run deeper.
Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, the pillars of the batting order for over a decade, are now firmly in the veteran bracket. Both have been managing niggles. KL Rahul will be over 35 by the time the tournament begins. Ravindra Jadeja, once an automatic pick, is no longer a guaranteed starter.
Fitness has crept from being a background metric to a live selection issue. “The fielding of the team has suffered due to fitness issues. The team management feels that they need younger backups ready,” the source added.
Tilak, then, is not just a tactical option. He is part of a generational hedge.
When Balance Forces Awkward Choices
The lack of multi-skill options in the top six has already forced India into uncomfortable experiments.
Over the past year, the management has repeatedly pushed Washington Sundar or Axar Patel into the No. 5 or No. 6 slots simply to hold the XI together. Both are fine cricketers, both capable of runs, but neither was groomed as a pure middle-order batter. Those moves were about balance, not ideal roles.
In England, the strain showed again. Ishan Kishan walked out to bat ahead of vice-captain Iyer, another sign that the hierarchy in the middle order is still unsettled and that trust in the current structure is not absolute.
South Africa’s World Cup conditions, with their pace and bounce, will test both technique and temperament. India do not want to discover under pressure that they backed the wrong combination.
Selectors Draw the Line on Out-of-Position Experiments
One thing is becoming clear: the selectors are increasingly wary of shunting batters into unfamiliar roles just to plug gaps.
Ruturaj Gaikwad offers a stark example. Picked as a backup opener when Gill was injured, he was pushed down to No. 4 against South Africa in Raipur and responded with a hundred. It should have been a statement innings. Instead, he has not been picked in the ODI side since.
“Gaikwad was picked as backup opener since Gill was injured. The team management feels Tilak could have been tried in that place. That’s why they don’t want to rush Devdutt Padikkal in the ODI setup because he found his calling in white-ball cricket while opening the batting,” the source said.
The message from the selectors is blunt: they don’t want to manufacture middle-order players out of top-order specialists and then discard them when the experiment feels awkward. Tilak, who has already operated in the middle order in white-ball cricket, fits more naturally into that slot.
An Anomalous West Indies Series
The upcoming West Indies ODIs will not reveal the final World Cup hand. They can’t.
Iyer, Tilak, Ishan Kishan and Axar Patel will all be unavailable, stripping the side of both established names and the very backups the management wants to test. Selection for that series, therefore, will be driven more by necessity than long-term planning.
The selectors, for now, are more focused on finding another wicketkeeper to cover that window than on reshaping the World Cup core. The real surgery comes later.
Afghanistan T20Is: Asian Games Blueprint
Before the New Zealand tour and the hard World Cup calls, there is another piece to slot into place.
By September 3, the selection committee is expected to name the squad for the three-match T20I series against Afghanistan in Delhi, starting September 13. The plan, according to those in the know, is to largely stick with the group chosen for the Asian Games.
The selectors are waiting on official fitness updates for Hardik Pandya, Nitish Kumar Reddy and Jasprit Bumrah. Varun Chakravarthy, it is understood, has already regained full fitness.
Those reports will shape the T20 squad, but they will also feed into the broader World Cup picture. Every injury, every comeback, shifts how boldly India can plan for South Africa.
For now, one thing is certain: in a dressing room dominated for years by established giants, the search for younger, multi-dimensional backups has begun in earnest. And if Tilak Varma can turn promise into performance with both bat and ball, he may find himself far more than just Shreyas Iyer’s understudy when the World Cup caravan finally rolls into South Africa.
